Friday, August 7, 2015

2015 Federal Election Link Round-up, Week 1

The campaign begins! We've all been waiting a long time for this.

During the campaign, I will be using this site as a hub. I'll be posting links to my CBC stories, interviews, and podcasts, as well as any interesting links I stumble upon during the campaign. I'll also have some original content (such as the July polling averages) that I will 'link' to as well. And, of course, the riding projections are still here on ThreeHundredEight.

These weekly posts will be continuously updated throughout the week, so check back every day to see what is new!

Friday, August 7, 2015
- The new episode of the Pollcast is up! This week's guest: Léger's Christian Bourque. We talk about the challenges of a long campaign and, of course, Quebec. Who better to talk about Quebec than Christian? The feed is now up, so you can subscribe. We'll have a new episode every week.

The thing to remember is that all polls have a 1/20 chance of giving you incorrect conclusions. That is the standard (normal) 95% confidence applied to statistical tests. 5 times in 100 values....these are outliers and sometimes its very easy to see one, but even still just because something looks like it might be an outlier it does not automatically make it so.

strikingly (but not surprisingly) the mainstream media have focussed on the Nanos and Mainstreet polls, and barely acknowledged the most recent poll and the only one conducted since the start of the election. I can't imagine why...

Peter, you can look at the Forum poll as an outlier, and maybe it is, but the context is different from all the other polls. To me, it's quite reasonable that people who in the past few minths vaguely considered the NDP would, once the writ was dropped, commit to them. That being said, sure, the poll might turn out to be a bit "off", but why has no one considered that possibility for the much more peculiar Mainstreet poll?

That's right Ira. Since the Forum poll was done the day the election was called and we don't know what time of day (?) it has become "suspicious" !! By now there should be several polls out to compare with the Form one. Eric ??

I live right near Ottawa Chim. There was no mention, even on local radio. So the writ wasn't dropped till Harper's announcement. What was done by the bureaucracy was irrelevant. Until the formal announcement it wasn't actuality. Plus the poll hammered your party !! You are weird !!

Tuesday the Globe's Campbell Clark wrote up Nanos' second choice polling results.

Interestingly the NDP is the second choice for a large portion of Green supporters. The NDP needs to convince Ontario Greens that dumping Harper by voting NDP will be the best available outcome for climate change and environmental concerns.

Electoral margins bode to be very thin in Ontario as many seats will be decided by a couple hundred votes or less; so Green voters could tilt several seats.

The Greens most likely have no chance outside of Thunder Bay to take any Ontario seats; so the NDP needs to persuade them they have a serious opportunity to make a real change by using their vote to elect a sympathetic government.

As a Green I can tell you the NDP is doing everything possible to kill us off. They are a royal pain sometimes. Here in Thunder Bay we have a sitting MP who is Green but since he was NDP the Dippers are going to blow a wad of cash to try to knock him out. Meanwhile just a couple ridings away a sitting Conservative MP is at risk if the NDP puts all their Northern Ontario focus on beating him that would make sense. By attacking Greens here they might help create the killer split and put a Conservative in with under 30%.

Green parties often use environmentalism as a front for wealth redistribution (the BC Greens used to do this - I would argue that the IPCC does as well). But the federal Green Party today seems to recognize that markets work, and market-based environmental policy is the best way forward. I really like them.

I would hope that any disaffected Tories who can't bring themselves to vote for Harper again would vote Green rather than stay home.

Where the opposition is split against a particular candidate, a vote for an opposition candidate with no hope of winning is as good as a vote for that particular candidate: ergo Ontario Green votes in this election will be effectively Harper votes.

That's nonsense. The only thing that is a vite for Harper is a vote for Harper. A vote for a frunge candidate is materially similar to not voting at all, but it's not a vote for Harper.

And it's not identical to a non-vote, because it has PR value. People will see the vote totals and perceive them as an indication of the relatove levels of support for that candidate or party. Someone could well vote for a fringe candidate in order to make a statement.

For example, in this year's Alberta election, I wanted the PCs to lose both the election and my riding. But the Tory candidate tried to use fear to persuade voters that he was the only candidate who could stop the NDP. At that point, voting for either the PCs or the NDP feeds that narrative, and I didn't want to do that, so I voted WR (even though I knew they hadnno chance to win the riding).

The marginal impact of one vote is effectively zero. It really doesn't matter for whom you personally vote. The margin of error in vote counting is bigger than one vote. One vote literally makes no measurable difference.

Vote for the candidate you want to vote for (for whatever reason), and don't let anyone tell you you're wrong.

So you cast your vite for a frunge candidate. Good for you for recognizing that the marginal impact of one vote is effectively zero. Quite right! So why bother at all? Because while my one lonely vote makes no difference either way, when I join my fellow Canadians in voting for change, it makes all the difference!

I couldn't get the desktop version of the site to work that morning, so I wrote that comment on my phone. Sorry about the spelling.

Why bother at all? That's up to each voter. I vote because I enjoy doing it.

You're right that when Canadians taken as a group vote, it makes a difference, but no individual is a significant portion of that group. Whether or not you join with your fellow Canadians demonstrably doesn't matter.

There is a problem though where a relatively small number override the national interest. I live in a riding that has been Tory since Confederation. Member is a farce but it doesn't matter. They keep getting elected and doing nothing !!

I think that is the biggest issue for Canadian democracy - people who would vote for a dead rat if it ran for the right party. We all know ridings where that dead rat would win as a Liberal, ones where it would win as a Conservative, and others where it would win as an NDP. Heck, Quebec was a great example of that last time (no dead rats but plenty of non-Quebecers who couldn't find the riding they won on a map).

A vote under FPTP always counts for something; one vote! As Elizabeth May correctly pointed out last night-"vote splitting" is an illusionary problem create by and for NDP purposes because on their own they can not accrue enough votes to win: People should vote for who they think best.

Partisans vote their party, and that hands all of the power to decide the election to the small minority of swing voters. You see this all the time in the US, where the Presidential election is decided every time by perhaps 10% of the voters in 4 or 5 states. States that always vote one way (California, Texas, New York) grant their voters no power at all over the election. But if you're a swing voter in Colorado or Ohio or Florida, you get to decide the election pretty much all by yourself.

As has been the case for awhile, the non-voters will be a larger group than whoever 'wins' so if you can draw those people out and get them to vote you can gain far more than any vote splitting. The key is to get people excited and feeling like their vote actually means something positive. From what I've seen people don't go vote to keep someone out, they vote to get someone in. With luck Elizabeth May's performance and how the media portrayed it after (as the vast majority of Canadians will not have watched that debate) will help get younger Canadians engaged again.

That is part of why I detest Mr. Harper - he has consistently done anything he could to discourage voting - his 'unfair elections act' is just the latest, mix with the robocalls scandal and his consistent breaking of promises and you can see why people get disengaged. Mix with the disaster that is Ontario with the Liberals breaking promises so often you have to figure whatever they promise is what they won't do and the Conservatives putting in place horrid leader after horrid leader and you see why we get fewer and fewer voting.

Plus John if you have to debate then get it done in such a way that the minimum number of voters can see or hear it. Thus the consortium debates are out as they can deliver to far to many people. Keep them as restricted as possible and then pull strings so your major opponent falls in line !!

Showing proof that one is a Canadian citizen and a resident of a riding before casting a ballot is a logical and smart reform. Why it wsn't put in place from the very beginning is beyond me but, it is hardly an insurmountable barrier that can not be overcome. When I stay in a hotel I have to show I.D., when I drive I have to carry I.D., if I go on a plane I must show identification. I do not think non-citizen voting is a problem but, why worry? Make people show I.D. and the problem-if there was one-is solved.

For someone who accuses the Conservatives of limiting voter turnout through discouragement John and Peter are you not doing the exact same thing through your slagging of the Conservative party and its leader through the use of select negative terminology toward the Conservative party?

Pete: "For someone who accuses the Conservatives of limiting voter turnout through discouragement John and Peter are you not doing the exact same thing through your slagging of the Conservative party and its leader through the use of select negative terminology toward the Conservative party? ."

It's called political discussion. Something you apparently don't believe in !!

Mandatory voting is a terrible idea, because it would introduce noise into the signal.

Democracy requires that we get the government the people want, yes? People who don't vote largely don't have a preference (if they did, they'd vote), so if they vote they're only one side of the equation, and they throw it out of balance.

The government should be selected by the people who are sufficiently engaged to bother voting. Those people are likely to be better informed on the issues, and be able to see through the lies they're being told (and all politicians will lie and mislead if they think it will help them win).

The problem with the ID issue is people in rural communities and reserves don't have a street address on their ID thus are hitting issues when ID requirements are increased. The ID thing seems like a solution looking for a problem. The biggest issue is people not voting, not people voting too much.

The Tories are clearly trying to reduce voter turnout overall. They want to place a greater burden on the other parties' GOTV activities, because that shifts some of their campaign funds away from things like advertising and travel.

In the 2011 general election, the polls got it really wrong--importantly because of the phenomenon in the 18-35 age group in which they typically said that they would vote NDP or Liberal but, in the end, generally didn't vote at all. How is this methodological problem being addressed by current polling?

I'd be interested to see you write about this issue in the future--as we move closer to e-day, people will be interested to know whether the polling numbers accurately capture the probable turnout for 18-35s. V.

Harper will do any dirty trick he can to retain power Ira. And no the public has no care about security despite all the Tory screaming. Stop somebody on the street and ask them and you will find out. Further why stop the idiots from going? Better to stop them fromcoming back !!

The Tories would argue that this is the case because terrorism is largely confined to non-Canadian parts of the world, and they're working to keep it that way.

Which is overly simplistic. The Americans are doing the bulk of the work there. Other countries participate in these things in token ways in order to curry favour with the Americans. Remember how we got the auto-pact.

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